The unequal distribution of asylum seekers in The Netherlands
Will the new government make the struggles of municipalities to host migrants in humane conditions harder?
Will the new government make the struggles of municipalities to host migrants in humane conditions harder?
After the far-right party of Geert Wilders (PVV) became the biggest in November, he vowed to have "the strictest asylum policy ever."
However, as a member of the European Union, The Netherlands cannot unilaterally decide to stop or significantly reduce how many asylum seekers it takes in. Experts have warned that the plans to reduce immigration, to the extent the new government wants, are unrealistic.
In the meantime, before the government potentially manages to reduce the amount of asylum seekers to settle in The Netherlands, mayors of the different municipalities are worried about the uneven distribution of asylum centers: some municipalities host thousands of people, others zero. In some places, this has led to inhumane situations, where hunderds had to sleep outside because the center was full and there were no showers. In 2022, Doctors without Borders deployed its first ever team in The Netherlands because of the circumstances at an asylum center in Ter Apel, and called the fate of the people there "inhumane." Yet, a law designed to remedy this by more equitably distributing refugees throughout the country will likely be revoked by the new government.
This story visualizes how asylum seekers are distributed throughout the country, and shows how a minority of municipalities are bearing the brunt. For the number of asylum seekers per municipality, I created a dataset based on data from the Centraal Orgaan Asielopvang (COA), the body in charge of the asylum centers. For data on population density as well as income distribution, data from the Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) was used.